Wednesday, January 12, 2005

But seriously Dino.......

If one can be a dispassionate, objective observer when considering the recent presidential and Washington State gubernatorial elections, one has to reflect on the folly of considering either side a clear populist choice. A prime example, the WA election, was "won" by something like 130 votes out of 2.8 million cast, a miniscule, insignificant percentage. Its a virtual tie, giving either side the right to claim victory, depending on how you skew the numbers. It just so happened that the lefties out-skewed the righties for a change ( I seriously think the righties' outrage is due to the fact that the lefties finally learned some of their tricks!). So with a virtual tie, one needs a clear, specific, comprehensive process to settle upon a winner. The WA Secretary of State (a righty) has decided that the process was followed to the letter, and certified the results.

Now, leaving the realm of objectivity, the chaotic, multi-layered smokescreen that is being raised by the Rossi camp in the form of a challenge is typical of righty tactics: say it simply, repeat it a gazillion times on radio and TV, and it becomes the truth ("freedom's on the march"). People who haven't even seen the evidence are parroting the party chair's claim that "dead people and felons" have voted. If one looks through the smoke, one can see that realistically, its impossible to have an election in which 39 counties do it 39 different ways with 3 million people, to not have many, many anomolies and irregularities to point at. And chaos is the favorite tool of the desperate loser. That's the reason for the process (and unlike Florida and Ohio, WA does not have a secretary of state who is also chairing one of the candidates campaigns!).

One of the older claims is that "King County was able to go back and reconsider rejected votes and other counties were not" (King has by far the largest population, and is lefty leaning). If fact, several counties reconsidered rejected ballots during the manual recount, before they certified the election. King was the only county which had not certified at the time they reconsidered previously rejected ballots; being the largest county the recount took longer. The only reason it got so much attention was because it was the one that finally tipped the balance. Yet this claim is still being vocalized by the vanquished.......